


Counterparties: Soolin

by Match (pachipachi)



Series: Counterparties [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Gaslighting, POV First Person, Post-Gauda Prime, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12626103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pachipachi/pseuds/Match
Summary: Counterparty, noun: the other person entering into a contract or transaction. Soolin tells Vila a secret in return. It’s not a nice story. To clarify, Soolin retains complete control of the situation, but that isn’t entirely a good thing.





	Counterparties: Soolin

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers to Fireswan for the early encouragement. All subsequent missteps are mine alone. I don’t generally do warnings, but please mind the tags. There's your average wholesome Scorpio crew sex romp, and then there's... this.

I slept with Tarrant. I said I could do you one better, and Vila, you know I don't exaggerate. Like you it was just the once, though we were lying down at the time.

Do you remember, after the affair with Dorian, how I disappeared for a few days? Xenon Base was built into and alongside of an existing cavern network, so it was easy finding places to hide.

I'd little reason to trust any of you when we first met. You'd taken care of Dorian, which freed me of professional obligations. It didn't mean we were on the same side. If I were to join you, I had to do so from a position of strength. Or at least what felt like strength at the time.

Avon saw my value right away. I knew he wouldn't do anything that might run me off, not if there was a chance we might do business. Dayna wasn't a threat, nor were you. Tarrant was the wild card.

Think about it, Vila. I'm paying you a compliment. You never seemed the type to mistake a colleague for a plaything. But Tarrant might have, if it pleased him, until it didn't please him anymore. 

Wouldn't he? You tell me, you knew him longer.

It’s true Avon might have warned Tarrant off if he’d made any really crude overtures. But relying on one man to protect me from another would have been as good as surrender. Maybe you could have stayed on after losing face like that, but I couldn't. And if Tarrant didn't take no for an answer, and I had to threaten him? Avon couldn't let that stand or he'd lose face, and then I'd be out in the cold with no references.

But I’d always been on my own. It took a long time to for me count myself one of you, and that's not a play for sympathy. It's a statement of fact. Avon would have been doing what he thought best for everyone. Having to leave on short notice might have inconvenienced me, but it's not worth getting angry about that kind of thing. If a friendship never happens there's nothing to regret.

So, to the night in question. I'd traded my coverall for a chemise, boots under my arm, with a few things knocking around in the toes just in case. I'd already scouted where you were keeping yourselves and the routes you took getting there, so it was no trouble to stay out of sight. Tarrant's door opened at a touch. It was a relief but also a disappointment.

Because he was acting like an amateur. You all were. Letting me skulk around as I pleased served Avon’s purposes in the end, but it’s not a risk I would have taken if our positions had been reversed. Not to mention that Dorian might have had another friend hidden away on the lower levels, or waiting on the far side of the planet.

Of course there wasn’t anyone else. I didn’t even have full control of the surveillance system, thanks to Dorian’s dead hand. I saw a lot of things in those few days that didn’t make sense until much later.

All right. I slid the door shut behind me. Tarrant was asleep on his side, arms and legs at odd angles, and I laid down and pulled the coverlet over us. With this sort of thing you’ve got to start small and escalate very slowly. I had to get him used to the idea of a stranger in his bed before he was alert enough to realize I wasn’t supposed to be there.

When Tarrant didn’t stir, I shifted my weight to see if the mattress would creak. When it didn’t, I scooted shoulders then hips so we were lying back to front, close but not touching. His breath didn’t change. I didn’t think he was skilled enough to counterfeit that, and I was right. I placed his arm where I wanted it and waited for his breath to quicken as he moved into a REM cycle.

I was on firm ground the moment his hand cupped my breast. “What have we here?” he said. Still too groggy to give it the full inflection, but he was definitely awake.

“It’s Soolin,” I said. “I’d been looking for you, Tarrant. I looked all over and now I’m here.”

On top of how ridiculous that sounds coming from me, I was doing a voice. If you were keeping up with the vizcasts about five years ago you’d know the one. Some do-gooders launched an anti-Shadow ad campaign that flopped on a galactic scale. There were at least ten spots, all starring the same ginger-haired actress with a squeaky voice. She was terrible and the slogans were worse, all out-of-date slang used wrongly. I got rather good at imitating her. A friend of mine did the announcer, and we had a whole routine. It was my only party trick.

My friend was a Shadow user himself, which tells you how effective the campaign was. We were close for a time and then we lost track of each other. The story’s always the same. I don’t need the sordid details.

Look, I can tell his story or this one. Your choice. Yes, that’s what I thought.

Tarrant put on what he thought was a lascivious expression. He didn’t seem to have noticed I was doing a voice. Or it’s possible he knew but thought it was sexy. “And what were you going to do with me when you found me?” he said.

It was all so cliche as to be downright pathetic. But none of that mattered, so long as Tarrant was on his way to getting something he thought he wanted. I put on my own lascivious expression and waited for him to kiss me. There’s a fine line between seduction and entrapment. I needed him to commit before I went any further.

No, Tarrant’s a decent enough kisser. It was more or less what I’d expected. I didn’t want to have to waste time on foreplay, so I’d made myself slick beforehand. I’ve never met a man who could tell the difference. Tarrant might have been able to taste it, but I didn’t plan on letting him get that close. I had him bite on my nipples, and that got me the rest of the way there. Then I climbed on top of him and that was that. Don’t imagine I kept up doing the voice, though. I can barely manage to talk dirty with people I want to go to bed with.

I’d ask if you wanted details, but there’s not much to tell. If I hadn’t been worrying about time, and noises in the corridor, I might really have enjoyed myself. Though I will say I don’t make a habit of leaving a man’s bed unsatisfied.

All right, Vila. We can drink to that.

Afterwards I went out on the surface and slept in a tree. I wanted to be someplace I could see the sky. The locals and I avoided each other, so the next time I spoke to anyone at all was when I knocked on Avon’s door and offered to show him the heart of the surveillance system.

I played it as if I were buying my way in, but Avon knew better. Knowledge of the complex was my last and only card. Without his expertise there was no chance of my gaining control of the system, and I couldn’t pilot Scorpio alone in any case. So that wasn’t the moment I joined you. It was the moment I gave up pretending I had any path off-planet that wasn’t your path. And Avon needed me enough to keep from throwing all that in my face. It was uncharacteristically kind of him. Maybe he was just tired.

Yes, I’m getting to Tarrant.

The aim was to keep him on the back foot, unsure of me and of where we stood with each other. If he were less confident he’d be more standoffish, or so I reasoned. Naturally he made a point of lingering nearby when Avon and I were going over schematics. It was the first time we’d laid eyes on each other since the night of, and I would have pretended to forget his name if I thought I could get away with it. As it was, I behaved as if I scarcely knew him. It wasn’t untrue. With one exception, we’d had no significant interaction.

That’s exactly it. If only Tarrant and I knew, and I never gave any sign that I remembered that exception, what proof did he have that it had ever been? I would have played dumb if he’d confronted me. Not scornful, just bemused at the idea. And which story would have sounded more plausible to the others: me throwing myself at a strange man, or Tarrant working up some fantasy about a woman he wanted but couldn’t have? If I were very lucky, he might come to misremember it. Or doubt that he hadn’t simply dreamed it.

I lied, and I made him live that lie with me. I’m not proud of it. But it was necessary. Or I believed it necessary at the time.

Of course I know those aren’t the same thing. I know, Vila. But I don’t do counterfactuals, only facts on the ground. If Tarrant had made it off G.P. we were bound to have it out eventually. I don’t doubt it would have ended with him never speaking to me again. But he died, and the story of how I wronged him also died. Until tonight.

So now you know.


End file.
